Hopefully not the best chance for evermore, gone. But this kind of blown opportunity scars a franchise, and in local lore takes the Rangers back to a long-ago place -- Tom Landry's Cowboys of the '60s.

Next Year's Champions, those clubs were called because of continuing postseason failure.

History, however, changed in the '70s.

No matter what, the history made here this week will not be kind to these Rangers, not after an epic late crumble in the 107th edition of the World Series.

Choke away a world championship the night before, and then do a Game 7 spotlight fade here Friday evening, and that allowed the St. Louis Cardinals to storm right through the door the Rangers couldn't close.

Hang an 11th world championship banner above right field at Busch Stadium after the Cardinals' 6-2 win in the World Series' first Game 7 in a decade.

The Rangers' Game 6 demise Thursday night became instantly legendary, and gutless, at least pitching-wise, is not too strong a label for the Rangers in that one. The Game 7 exit was about better pitching and better hitting prevailing, meaning, of course, the Cardinals stepped right up and took the title.

The Rangers went out with a no mas whimper.

An October ago, the Rangers lost a World Series, but even without being competitive over those five games still spent the winter given the warm and fuzzy treatment, and rightfully so.

But this October wasn't about just being back in the World Series. This was about winning the thing. There were two shots here at winning one game. Two failures resulted.

Forget warm and fuzzy. The Rangers have now entered a cold and mossy place. It's a local residence where the current Cowboys have had a permanent home for the past 16 seasons.

Granted, what now separates the Rangers from the Cowboys is a proper and respected power structure at the franchise top. Ownership allows the baseball people to do their job. There is cooperation, not stupid meddling.

But the bottom line is the same. Meet expectations. What happened here the past two nights is a disappointment of staggering proportions.

Game 6 will forever carry the if, if, if tag, as in if only Nellie Cruz had taken the proper read on that fly ball to right field in the bottom of the ninth, and if only somebody, anybody in the bullpen could have made one more favorable pitch.

But Game 7?

A quick 2-0 lead in the first inning off ace Chris Carpenter was a great way to get it started. Then Matt Harrison folded in the bottom of the inning, giving up two walks, followed by a ringing double from that man again, David Freese, and it's a 2-2 game. Freese, of course, was the World Series MVP.

Allen Craig, him again, homered off Harrison in the third, but with a 3-2 deficit, everything was still cool.

Yes, it was definitely time to remove Harrison for the fifth, but the bullpen immediately did its torch act again. How about two St. Louis runs scoring without a hit, and without a ball even leaving the infield.

Get this:

The first out was on a ground ball, then a Feldman walk, then he hit Albert Pujols on an 0-2 pitch, then a slow roller moved up the runners for the second out, then Freese was intentional walked, then Feldman walked Yadier Molina to force in a run, and he was gone.

The first pitch from C.J. Wilson out of the bullpen hit Rafael Furcal, and another run was plated. That made it 5-2, and the Rangers were already ready to call it a night, and a disaster.

Carpenter was a horse, pitching on three days' rest, overcoming a shaky start, working into the seventh inning, and in general, took the sting out of Rangers bats that were smoking the night before.

But this time the Cardinals' bullpen also responded after being knocked around the night before.

In the end, all that remained was the dog-pile celebration in the middle of the field, the fireworks, the confetti and another record crowd of 47,000-plus doing what fans have been doing here for generations -- celebrating a world championship.

Thousands of other ticketless St. Louis fans also crammed the downtown streets surrounding the ballpark, waiting out the evening with TVs and radios. Even when rain started falling right after the final out, the celebration continued wild and wet.

Overall, it was a fascinating World Series, the best in 10 years, and maybe in 20 years. Game 6 will be a talked about for decades.

But in the end, what happened in that Game 6 is a permanent tattoo on the Rangers. What happened in Game 7 simply compounded the frustration.

Joined: October 28 06, 11:10 pmPosts: 14759Location: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT

heyzeus wrote:

needs more Cowboys analogies.

The whole time reading it, I couldn't help but think I don't feel bad for a fan base that views baseball as just something to fill the gap between football seasons. Seems like that's all we faced in October.

The whole time reading it, I couldn't help but think I don't feel bad for a fan base that views baseball as just something to fill the gap between football seasons. Seems like that's all we faced in October.

Presumably the emphasis has changed with the Rangers' success, but when I lived there back in the 1980s, Cowboys training camp was always the leading sports story.

First of all - Galloway is an overreaction specialist and he'll tell you so.

Second of all, this is cowboy country and 80 % of the are just on the wagon because it gets them thru the summer. They know very little about baseball. I had one guy tell me he played triple a ball, So he knew what he was talking about. The rangers would win it because they had more closers than the cardinals. I mentioned salas and motte, and he said the rangers had seven closers. Seven? Yeah every one that isn't a starter is a closer. I didn't bother to ask where he played aaa.

But this mentality is prevalent. The fact is, the next cowboy game will take the rangers off the airwaves anyway. Either they'll be pissing Romo or praising him, but most here won't hardly remember that Cruz didn't catch that ball, they'll be blaming Dez.

This thread really needs to hit 200 before we archive it. Come on, 11th Championship, Greatest Comeback in History, Greatest offensive display by one player in history, Greatest game (6) in World Series history, Last game of Larussa's career, Extra income means Dewallet doesn't have to sell the urinals. there's plenty of material for 16 more pages!

Joined: October 28 06, 11:10 pmPosts: 14759Location: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT

Richie Allen wrote:

Choke away a world championship? If anyone potentially choked away the series it was us. We very easily win 6 of 7 if our defense wasn't suspect.

We had a very good shot at ending the series within 5 games.

Here's another thing, late in the game in game 6, why was is inconceivable that the Cardinals could score 2 runs in an innings when Texas had already done it? It was amazing, but it's not like we did something Texas didn't do. The difference was we managed to throw a scoreless inning in time to score 1 run in the same inning.

Game 7 Carp found his arm slot after giving up 2 runs and just dealt the rest of the night. I don't care who you are, when Carpenter is hitting his locations and getting good drop on his pitches, nobody hits him.

It sucks for them, but the Cardinals did earn it. The Cardinals made plenty of mistakes, but played that much better to make up for it.